Category Archives: Series: The War Against Us

It is ironic that the day I read the reply from Vigilant Vicky Hartzler’s ‘office’ to my letter in the Lake Sun Leader, the House voted to pass the NDAA, allowing the US military to come into our homes, in the middle of the night, without cause or warrant, zip tie us up and take us away to a secret military detention center. As I read the condescending, dismissive tone used by ‘the office of Vicky Hartzler’, in an attempt to somehow justify the arrest of an admittedly peaceful Missourian who chose to wait for her in the office we provide her, and as she prepares to cast a vote in favor of SOPA which will allow the government to shut down any website under vague and broad jurisdiction, I am left with only one response.

This is what a police state looks like.

Members of Occupy KC in on Capitol hill during a week of solidarity actions in Washington, D.C.

To the ‘Office of Vicky Hartzler’, whatever that is supposed to mean:

I have to ask what ‘responsibilities’ you think come with our First Amendment rights as you prepare to make a vote to shut down internet web sites? That, I think, might be good for us to know. Do we have the ‘responsibility’ to practice our freedom of speech and talk with our officials directly? Wait, that is a right still, isn’t it? I must say that your ‘office’s’ attempt at setting the record straight really seems to provide more questions than answers. In fact, given my own disapproval of your having Missourians arrested, I wonder how long will it be, Vigilant Vicky, before you have the military snatch me up for dissent? Do you accept revised history’s version of ‘enhanced interrogation’? Never mind. The NDAA authorized torture too, so it’s a mute point.

I reject your pro-corporate policies and agendas. You serve your masters who threw millions into the race in 2010, getting you elected on an overwhelming wave of propaganda. Since taking office, you have done nothing, other than lead the rally cry for ending all rules for big business and the banks, although you call it a ‘moratorium on job-killing regulations’ and an end to ‘government overreach’. The regulations we used to have would have protected us from 2008 and what we are still facing now. Those regulations were removed by those of your kind.

This ‘office’ you have doesn’t represent the majority of this district because we are the 99%. Rep. Hartzler, you and the people you represent certainly aren’t us. If we were, you might have had guts enough to justify the arrest yourself.

It has been worst case scenario. But had you told me even as recently as a month ago, that Congress would overwhelmingly approve a spending bill that would include in it the extension of the battlefield to US soil and the definition of ‘terrorist behavior’ to be so loose as to include language to the effect of ‘inciting action against the government’. As a matter of fact, a similar reason was offered after the assassination of a sixteen-year-old boy in Yemen earlier this year.

It allows the United States to take military action against civilians. It allows for our military to indefinitely detain anyone it likes. It allows them to torture you. It allows them to kill you.

Congress has capped off a decade long campaign against the rights of the people of the United States with the passage of the NDAA. This officially declares the United States as part of the battlefield and applies its rules in our borders.

They can do these things if you are deemed by our intelligence community to be a threat to the government. If you are engaged in acts of dissent, are an activist and participate in civil disobedience, you could be easily labeled a terrorist. Today in the UK, a police letter was released today referring to those who participated in riots earlier this year as ‘terrorists’.

Our Congress has actually passed a law that declares the United States a battlefield and applies the rules of engagement to us. It is still hard to believe.

I have read histories that detail how radical economic transformations have been made possible in US sponsored actions after the end of World War II. I’ve read case after case that illustrate evil alliances between United States corporations, in relentless pursuit of profit, and the US government and the tools at its disposal. I’ve read stories of union leaders being assassinated in Ford plants in Argentina as massive economic changes were enforced.

I’ve read about the murder of democracy in Chile during another September 11 attack, this one thirty-eight years ago. It was brought on by telephone giant ITT, among others. The Chilean people had voted in a Socialist, you see. He was going to break up the US phone monopoly and kick them out of his country. On September 11, 1973, President Allende was murdered in a bloody CIA inspired coup and the US supported regime of Pinochet began a bloody police state and the free market makeover of Chile. The country has yet to recover from the atrocities committed in the name of unfettered, uncontrolled corporate capitalism and the beast of an unleashed free market.

I have read how, much like here in the United States, Bolivia was the victim

Beginning with the Patriot Act, continuing with the coordinated violence used by the police on protesters, it is no surprise Congress has decided to make oppression the new law of the land.

of the ultimate case of election fraud. They elected a previous president, a known leader, whose administration had put the people and their interests at the fore. The second time around, after US interests came calling, Paz flipped positions and enacted harsh austerity measures on his people, coupled with privatization and deregulation, the American calling card. Loans from the IMF for the country’s ‘development’ passed through Paz’ government to US corporations while the Bolivians were given the bill. Much like is going on here and in Europe now.

A police state is necessary to enact such harsh and unpopular reforms. In a democracy, where people are supposed to have a say, these measures are destined to fail. Therefore, the machinations of the police state and the passage of the NDAA.

I never thought they would be so arrogant, so bold, as to openly declare the US a battlefield though it’s appropriate. It would appear that if we intend to maintain our rights, we will have to take a stand.

All that remains now that the NDAA has passed both houses of Congress is the thin red line of veto. The declaration of war against our rights was passed by treacherous politicians acting in the interest of themselves and the 1%. A veto is all that’s left and as I think of our President, the Nobel Peace winning, ‘Democrat’ who is shredding our safety nets and Constitution with equal abandon, I am reminded of the example of the story of Bolivia. Of the country who was sold a big fat lie and the people who are still under the heavy boot of oppression powered by the international banking cartels. I think of the billion dollars the traitor in chief promised to raise and I can only say one thing.

“We are the 99%.”

And we are waking up. Even if it took an official declaration from you to do it.

The past decade has seen an unbridaled attack on our liberties. With the passage of the NDAA, Congress would usher us into an age of darkness and fear. They have formally declared war on Americans.

Late Friday night, after the major media outlets had retired for the evening, the Senate held a quiet vote on the NDAA spending bill. There were few witnesses to this act, which was by design. There was no hoopla, no spirited debate. Undercover of darkness and weekend, the US Senate, including Missourians Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill, overwhelmingly approved an act of war against the American population. This was a bipartisan show of support, as the bill that authorizes both the indefinite detention of Americans and the use of torture on detainees passed through the chamber 93-7.

This marks a new era in our history. These proposals were attached to a normally routine spending bill that has been passed year in and year out without circumstance. This year however, in the wake of growing civil unrest and American Austerity yet to come, the Senate decided to make official their stance toward the electorate.

They have declared war on us and they have done so with full knowledge of what the bill contained. Here in our state, Senators Blunt and McCaskill voted in favor. Reps. Hartzler, Akin, Carnahan, Graves, Emerson and Luetkemyer voted yes in the House version of this bill earlier this year. I direct the letter below to the traitors who dared vote for this bill.

To you, the elected officials of Missouri:

This is the future we can expect, as our austerity measures are enacted and decision making processes are taken from us. Our local officials have over reached.

You are supposed to represent me. I pay taxes to our government through the things I buy, the wages I earn and the things I own. I may or may not have voted for you, but you represent me in our republic and I, as an American citizen, own the seat you hold. That means you will be held accountable for the decisions you make on the people’s behalf. Friday night you, our Senators, cloaked in darkness, whispered in unison with our Representatives inside our hallowed halls of government. You set aside party in order to focus on your common enemy, us. I wonder if your hearts were beating faster or if your palms sweat as you cast your treasonous lot against the people of this country. I wonder if you finally understand the meaning of the power behind the simple slogan, “We are the 99%”.

You voted for the military to have the right to disappear people in the middle of the night who dissent against your regime. You are doing this because you that soon, the protests that have persisted for nearly three months will swell into legions as each day reveals more and more of your insidious agenda and corrupt behavior. This will happen as an inevitable conclusion stemming from what you and your corporate benefactors have done to our economy, our country and our future. You know it is coming. You have done the jobs you were paid to do all-too-well.

You voted to resend the ban against torturing the same people you pick up in the middle of the night, as you have done in Gitmo for nearly a decade. These are the same tactics you, by virtue of your votes, endorse as our foreign policy to be exported to the world. We do not need to abide by the Geneva Convention, according to you. Allowing police to use pepper spray is a violation of that agreement as well. It’s use is summarily banned on military battlefields. It shouldn’t be surprising then that, last week, the United Nations have questioned the United States’ handling of both protesters and the media, as there have been regular and repeated human rights violations during politically directed crackdowns on free speech.

You wish to run a police state wherein the citizens can practice their rights, as long as they support the regime. These are the same regime archetypes that you have exported to the Middle East. The heavy hand of tyranny is necessary to enforce the changes you intend to make to both our system of democratic government and our economies. You intend to remake America in the image of the ‘free market’ police state, where everything is farmed out to corporations and we pay for it all.

You are considering bills that would control the internet, to restrict free speech and communication, under the guise of ‘anti-piracy’ laws. It is an extension of the war you have declared against our rights. The past decade has seen a march against the rights of the 99%, because you knew eventually we the people, would come knocking. You voted to imprison someone like me. For writing this.

You are not doing us a service with your ‘service’.

To all of you who currently hold office, and with it, the mantle of responsibility, I offer a historical context as you consider the path you have elected to take us down by declaring war on us. Each time an overwhelming force confronted the people of this nation, we rose up against it. We set aside our petty differences to focus on a common enemy. There are striking similarities between the regime you propose to create under the veil of American democracy and those we defeated in the past. You are trying to legitimize secret police squads and torture chambers. You are trying to perfect a particular vision. The last time the world saw this kind of evil manifest, the people of the United States of America rose together and declared in one loud voice: “No.”

We turned away the nightmare of tyranny you offer here, time and again. From our foundations as a nation, to the liberation of a continent, we have been the caretakers of freedom. Not our government, but our people themselves, whose sacrifices paid for the very liberties the 1% and their cronies conspire to legislate away.

To you, the legislators of Missouri, I am interested to hear what you have to say. Come down here and stand in our square and own it. Own your vote, own your point of view, own your record. Come down here and tell us, face to face, why you have voted to allow kidnap and torture of our citizens. We are the ones who put you in office, after all.

The unemployment rate in this country dropped magically to 8.6% this week. This, because we ‘added’ 120,000 jobs for the month of November. We have been hemorrhaging jobs in this country at a rate of over 400,000 a week for

With each passing day, it becomes more difficult to hide America's new reality. Millions of Americans are finding their expectations aren't being met.

months. That is an average of 1.2 million people put out of a job each month. November’s job number would only be 10% of the number of jobs lost for the month. Now THAT is creative accounting. Additionally, the jobs they brag about are temporary holiday retail jobs. And here in Missouri, where the legislature changed the child labor laws, we might soon have to watch 12 and 13 year old children running registers on Black Friday’s to come.

If the number really did dip, it is because millions of Americans fell from the roles as their benefits ran out and they are now without incomes. Convenient, isn’t it, that they claim that as a victory?

This, while they pass a law through the Senate, 93-7. Yes, you read that right. They can, it seems unite behind the National Defense Authority Act, a bill which allows the military to come into your house, snatch you up, sneak you away to Gitmo or another ‘black site’. They never have to charge you with a crime and can hold you indefinitely and without trial. They will be able to do this in secrecy and those who dissent may never be heard from again. There is additionally a provision that will repeal the executive order against torture. This, Congress can agree on.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve secretly gave $7 trillion of our tax dollars to big banks to further insulate them from the coming storms the Eurozone ‘crisis’ is sure to bring to our shores. France and Germany are pushing for a unification of European finances, to further consolidate power and take it away from the people of all countries in the EU. It is impossible to pass such harsh austerity measures against the public where there is democracy and the right to vote, requiring a new way of making these decisions. They are replacing our democracy with unelected financial managers. If you are interested in seeing the American version of this, look at Flint and other Michigan towns where this has been done by the state, abolishing local government in favor of these technocrats.

The Fed has also pledged our money to banks overseas, who cooperate by enacting austerity measures and enforcing them by gassing and beating their people into submission. Making them disappear. Shooting at them with rubber bullets. Shooting at them with real ones.

They don’t want socialized, free medicine, but they want us all to pay for a ‘crisis’ brought on by their schemes and manipulations. It is a massive socialization of debt, brought on by their fraud and greed, perpetrated by the monsters who have honed this practice to a fine art through the years.

My mother taught me as a child to be wary of those who come bearing gifts, as they all too often are bringing an equal helping of bad intentions. The payroll holiday they are debating in Congress, if extended to employers, will eventually bankrupt a previously solvent trust with an excess in funds of over two trillion dollars.

If you can’t see the truth, I don’t know what to say to you. Most of the rest of us do. We are the 99%. A young black man, a protester with Occupy DC, said on the few news outlets that would cover the Occupation of a Democrat Party event, “This isn’t partisan. The Republicans. The Democrats. They aren’t going to save us.”

They aren’t. They have, it would seem, now passed legislation that would declare war on us. They may as well have made it official. To anyone in the Lake area who would support their points of view I say, shame and wake up. They care nothing for us. None of them do.

The largest employer in Camdenton is, by far, Wal-Mart. Look at the recent

Wal-Mart has led the way in promoting the corporate agenda around the country. Their involvement with organizations such as ALEC and their funding of private conservative 'think-tanks' . These 'think-tanks' dictate pro-corporate policies.

decisions they paid for against women’s rights in the workplace. They effectively killed the class action lawsuit, making it more difficult to hold corporations accountable for large broad-based claims. Here in Missouri, their money has gone to fund legislation that repealed child labor laws and overturned the people’s wishes regarding the minimum wage. The list goes on.

For all of you who have supported keeping Guantanamo Bay as a prison for people who have not been charged with a crime and those who believe, as some presidential candidates do, that torture should be allowed when questioning said prisoners, meet the National Defense Authorization Act. This spending bill, passed by the Senate this week, has in it

Guantanamo Bay is a prison full of people who have never been charged with a crime and never been taken to trial. They are held in a hellish limbo indefinitely. The NDAA would allow the military to do this to US citizens in our own homes.

a provision that would allow the US military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect, anywhere in the world. This will broaden the definition of battlefield to apply anywhere, including inside the borders of the United States of America.

This proposal, authored in secret committee by Senators Levin (D) and McCain (R), would allow United States citizens to be imprisoned indefinitely, without ever having a charge brought against them. It takes a moment for that to sink in, doesn’t it?

As the Occupy protests grow with each passing day, the threat to the 1% is growing as well. Wednesday will see one of the largest protests in decades in the UK. The #N30 strike as it is being called, will see Brits strike against the austerity measures that have been enacted against them by their government. Last week, Egypt protests renewed as the military elites supported by the US government have entrenched themselves in power against the wishes of the people. Greece, Italy and Spain are teetering as well, protesting regularly against their forced austerity. It is no wonder that our government, who is a decades long supporter of the police state as both a profit center and business model, has tried to slip this legislation through.

As is clear in Europe now, governments intend to force the 99% to accept austerity. They intend to take what they want and socialize their debts to the rest of us. The banks who own our government were secretly given $7 trillion in taxpayer dollars from the Federal Reserve. We don’t know to whom this money went or how much each received but it was enough money in total to give each man, woman and child in this country over $100,000. The Federal Reserve isn’t even part of the government. It is a private company, so they don’t have to tell us what they do with our money.

With each passing day, the need for the creation of a US police state grows for the 1%. Without it, they will not maintain power. In September of this year, it was announced that the US military was using seven drones domestically in order to monitor our borders. As the moving

The application of drone technology here at home could impact right to privacy and pave the way for a host of abuses.

parts of the US police state are explored, the domestic use of drones to spy on American citizens must be looked at as the next logical frontier. There have been hearings at the FAA regarding their domestic use and application. The police want to use them as replacements for manned aircraft and drone technology is much more flexible. Small helicopter drones can be used for hovering outside windows, for example.

It is important to note that the same bill that contains the proposal that would allow for the military to snatch people us in the middle of the night has another addendum as well. This second proposal would repeal the executive order banning torture.